Saturday, July 27, 2013

Here's more art for Crash Bandicoot fans. This is a follow up for a post from a few days ago featuring Crash and Coco and their pets Pura and Baby T. They're concept sketches from a session with Naughty Dog. Not sure if these have been seen before. Perhaps a couple of these entries are new to publication. I leave it to the experts here to determine that. The drawings are dated February 26 1998 and are photocopies of the originals made the day they were created. Hope you enjoy them.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

A local animation studio here in Burbank is moving to a different location in town. I got a call from them and was offered the chance to stop by and load up on art supplies they were looking to donate to a school. Part of what I picked up was a good number of color markers. That replenished the stash I had and now I can conveniently splash some pigment around. These two sketches are what I came up with this evening in class. It's been a while since I've worked with color markers. Looking forward to getting back into form with a little practice.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Part of the development art I created in 2000 for "Project Y" which was later named Jak and Daxter had to do with assisting the naughty Dog crew in understanding the anatomical structure for modeling purposes of some of the characters being created. This is a drawing I came up with to give a better understanding of the lead character who eventually became Jak. This is what he was looking like at the time.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

These simple minimalist marker sketches on brown paper may look like simple minimalist marker sketches on brown paper. Indeed that is what they are. But there's more. These images helped make a strong point at Cal State University Northridge in 2007 when I was teaching there. The point being that you don't necessarily need to make a big fuss about drawing from life. A simple minimalist statement can create an effective impression. You don't really see anything yet each one of these ladies are communicating with everyone that casts their eyes upon therm. A lot of return for the effort put forth.

Monday, July 22, 2013

On February 26 1998 while in a session with Naughty Dog in the high rise office complex at Universal Studios my design assignment for the day was to come up with concept sketches of Crash and Coco Bandicoot together with their pets Pura and Baby T. Kind of like a group portrait. These are the first three drawings. I numbered them sequentially so I know for certain which ones were done first. They're photocopies made the day they were created. Unfortunately some aspects of the images were lost in the cropping. The originals were left with ND. I don't know how many in this series were previously published but I'll be following up with what I have in any case.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

I was sketching in class the other night prepping for this coming week's sessions and an assignment in facial expressions for Character Design. I looked to make an example of progressing from one animated mood to another.Here's the result...

Thursday, July 18, 2013

In 2007 I was teaching at California State University Northridge and that included a figure drawing class with live models. This was something I was doping while working with students. Although there was a live model it didn't necessarily mean that the actual subject could be open to interpretation. There were rolls of brown wrapping paper there so I used some of it to create unusual things. I'll have more from these sessions in days ahead.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

I'm sure these drawings are already online but might as well follow up since I already posted the first part of this series of sketches a few days ago. Dated February 19 1998 here's Crash and his pet dinosaur Baby T in exploratory poses from the development of Crash 3. These are black and white photocopies I made for my records while at Naughty Dog the day I drew them. Thus the cutoff of some of the composition below. Hope the Crash fans here can live with it.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Hi again everyone! Hope you're doing well. Thanks for hanging around. I'm back in Burbank after a few days off attending to personal matters and having a good time in general. Now it's back to work having fun.

Thought I'd get things going with another look at some of the female design concepts from Jak and Daxter when it was called "Project Y' in the year 2000. These ladies were ideas for a character that was not intended to be very nice. I did several versions of her and these three were among my favorites.

Friday, July 05, 2013

Hi everyone. I'm traveling about for the next few days and won't be posting art during this time. But I will be checking in to follow up on comments should they come in. Hope you're having fun and as always thanks for following my blog. We'll be back to sharing creativity soon.

Thursday, July 04, 2013

One of these days I'm gonna pick up on ArtShark again and continue to develop him. He's the mascot of my school. He appeared on the printed schedules and the website of The Animation Academy from 1998 to the end of 2004. A good run with lots of pictures and no two are the same. Every time we see him he's dressed as something else. This one is from the summer schedule in 2002. ArtShark is made up like Uncle Sam to wish everyone in the US a happy and safe 4th of July Holiday!

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Time for some Spyro! Thought I'd share some of the drawings which I consider to be among my favorites from the body of work originally created for the character. The first drawing is the one where the final design was achieved and approved by Insomniac Games. These were created while working down the hall from Insomiac's offices at Universal Studios. Next one is the final design starting to come to life. Both of these drawings are dated January 23 1997. The next is a facial expression of Spyro whereby I was directed to make him look pushed to the edge on the verge of a rage. This is dated January 30 1997.

After all the years that have gone by along with the many Spyro games that have come out it's interesting to compare how the character was first envisioned. We'll see more of Spyro and his broad range of attitudes in upcoming entries.